Mist
by Bandit3
Summary: A late-night 'visitor' turns Mimi's entire life upside-down and inside-out. When she is forced to make the hardest decision of her life, will she make the ultimate sacrifice...or be prisoner to her guilt forever?


*~* Mist *~*  
A Digimon Fanfic By Bandit  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
He disappeared a year ago, at the age of nineteen. I didn't know any more about it then than anyone else did. I just mourned along with the rest of them.  
  
I know now. Sometimes I wish I didn't, but then I realize it's better this way. Still, if I'd never known, if I'd signed him off as dead to me forever, then I wouldn't be who I am now. And sometimes, I wish I could take back who I am now.  
  
But then, I remember...  
  
*~*  
  
I remember the first time it crossed my mind that something was wrong. It didn't really cross my mind so much as jump up in front of my face. I heard a soft sound outside my window one night while I was getting ready for bed. As I glanced out, something moved in the shadows outside. There was a soft rustling, like something moving through the bushes, and then a noise, like a whimper. I thought it might be a dog, and started to go to the window...  
  
It was then that I heard the growl. It was unlike any dog I'd ever heard, or even any Digimon. It was...bizarre. And I didn't like it. I moved away from the window and went upstairs as quickly as I could. The rustling stopped soon afterward, and I assumed that whatever it was had gone away.  
  
The next month it was back again, this time moving around my house and... Well, for lack of a better word, it felt like it was searching for something. Once again, I withdrew into my house and ignored it, and it went away, although it took longer this time. The next morning, I was confused by the fact that the garbage cans and compost pile had been left alone. What was this thing after?  
  
I never thought the something could be me.  
  
On the third month, I was away from home on a trip. When I came back, I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary until I reached the front door. There were five long gashes, half an inch deep, running through the wood of the door. They were spaced like the four fingers and thumb of a hand, although the dimensions were a bit off; the thumb was too close, and the fingers in too curved of a line. When I placed my own hand on the door, my fingers didn't begin to reach the starting-points of the grooves; this creature had a paw the size of a frying pan.  
  
I was disturbed, to say the least. Especially when the animal control officer told me that the marks didn't match anything he'd seen before, and that an animal large and strong enough to make them would have been spotted long before it could reach my house.  
  
He said it had to be the size of a cougar, or even a small bear.  
  
I bought new locks for my doors. Two each. And I thought I was safe.  
  
I should have known better.  
  
*~*  
  
When the fourth month came, I was sitting in my dining room drinking cocoa when I saw the movement outside. Curious as I was, I went over to look. I was foolish enough to feel secure within my double-locked house.  
  
It never occurred to me that something that could rend a heavy wooden door as if it were made of warm butter, could-and did-easily break a window.  
  
I got only a glimpse of light reflecting from slanted eyes and sharp teeth. Then a thunderbolt of gold fur and silver-gray claws exploded through the window, followed by the rest of the beast's body. It slammed into me, tumbling me to the floor with a crash of breaking porcelain as my mug flew from my hand. The rows of razor teeth snapped together inches from my bare neck, and I felt its hot breath and screamed.  
  
The world was spinning around me, but for a split second as I waited for death I thought I felt the pressure of its body on me lighten, and a soft, almost confused growl escape those black-lined lips. Then I was tumbling again, this time down an endless vertical tunnel of darkness which took me blessedly far away from my shattered dining room and the beast that had finally found me.  
  
*~*  
  
When I surfaced again, I was lying on a sofa. A blanket was wrapped around me, and I felt no pain.  
  
Of course, I reminded myself, that didn't necessarily mean that I was unhurt. I could be dying, but if I was in shock, I wouldn't feel a thing.  
  
Still, I couldn't find anything wrong as I slowly stretched my arms and legs, and the blanket was soft and warm, although the scent of it was unfamiliar; certainly not the rose-petal potpourri I kept in my closet with all of my own blankets.  
  
Wait. No. The smell was familiar. Just long-forgotten... I racked my brains for a moment, trying to remember where I'd smelled this before. It wasn't the same; that was for sure. The familiar smell was there, but on top of it was another, something wild and strange and with a hint of pine woods and musk to it, and a fleeting sense of danger...  
  
I still hadn't opened my eyes, so it was a shock when he spoke.  
  
"Mimi?"  
  
I kept my eyes closed. The scent and the voice clicked together, and I suddenly realized that this was all a dream. It had to be, because the person they belonged to was gone.  
  
"Mimi, are you awake?"  
  
There it was again. Slowly, I opened my eyes. If this was a dream, I might as well go along with it, and hope to wake up soon.  
  
Yes, there he sat, in a wing armchair pulled up next to my sofa. A concerned look lit his ice blue eyes as they met mine.  
  
"How are you? Do you hurt anywhere? I couldn't bring you to a hospital when I woke up, but you seemed all right..."  
  
His voice trailed off on an apologetic note. I frowned, but let the odd comment pass. This was all a dream, anyway.  
  
I started to sit up then, and realized that my assessment of my hurts had been wrong. I hadn't moved more than my limbs in my little stretch, and now I felt my bruised stomach and back protesting the movement loudly.  
  
"Oww..." I whimpered, and in an instant he was all worried care, asking what hurt and where. I lay back down and told him, reluctantly admitting to myself that with that kind of pain, this probably wasn't a dream after all. Still, nothing seemed to be broken; my muscles ached and burned, but that was it. He seemed relieved when I told him that, and relaxed visibly.  
  
"Good...I was worried about you."  
  
I frowned again. If this wasn't a dream, then...  
  
"Matt? Where am I? And...what was that thing?"  
  
His face fell slightly, a change I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been watching him so carefully.  
  
"This...is my home," he said, with a strange, almost bitter tone to the word 'home' that I didn't understand. "I think I brought you here. I don't know why; I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it."  
  
"What?" I said, confused. "What do you mean, you think you did?"  
  
"I don't remember," he said, looking at his hands. "I never do. Mimi..." He looked up at me, and I shivered involuntarily without knowing why. Something in his eyes chilled me.  
  
"Matt?" I said, bewildered and a little afraid.  
  
He took a deep breath. "Unless I miss my guess, that thing was me."  
  
*~*  
  
It took him a long time to explain the whole story to me, and parts of it even he didn't know, but had to guess. The long and the short of it, minus my interruptions and questions, went like this...  
  
  
A year ago, he had inherited his grandmother's home in the country. One night, he went outside at the sound of something moving around in the woods. Before he could get his bearings in the dark, he had been attacked by something enormous and snarling. It had bitten him in the shoulder; he passed out soon afterward.  
  
He woke up in an unfamiliar room, with a bandage on his wounded shoulder and a strange woman watching him. She was very old, with long, silver hair and tired gray eyes, and she informed him that he was doomed.  
  
Matt had been bitten by a werewolf; one of a long line of similar victims that went back long before recorded history, inhabiting the lonely tower he'd been brought to. It was tradition that in one's old age, a victim was to be allowed to survive the attack and brought back to the tower to live there once their predecessor had died; this wasn't a voluntary thing, or his predecessor wouldn't have let it happen. It was instinct, and inescapable... It didn't take her long to live up to the last part of the tradition, either; almost before she could pass on the skills to him that she'd learned to keep herself under as much control as she could, she was dead, victim of a deer hunter's gun.  
  
Yes, even werewolves die, he told me, although their life-spans are much longer than humans'. And, contrary to what I'd heard in too many ghost stories, they aren't impervious to the usual methods of killing, either...the way he put it, with a rueful smile, was that 'silver or lead, it doesn't make any more difference to us than to you once it's in our guts'.  
  
So Matt had taken what he'd learned from her and improvised his own restraints on top of it, and so far he hadn't had the pain of training an 'apprentice' placed on his shoulders. But once a month he had to leave his tower, when the full moon kicked in and he made his transformation. When that happened, he wasn't in control any longer; the wolf was, and it was always hungry...  
  
*~*  
  
"I...try not to think about what happens then," he finished, looking at his hands. I was as cold as ice by then, not sure whether to feel pity or sympathy or revulsion for the friend I had once known, and felt I would never know again. Werewolves were the stuff of legends...  
  
"But...you're not in your old age," I whispered. "You can't be older than twenty. Matt, why am I here?"  
  
He went red. "I've been thinking about that," he muttered. "My...mentor...was old already when she brought me here, and forgetful. She told me everything she thought I needed to know, but she could easily have forgotten something that she hadn't had to think about for a long time, or maybe she was killed before she finished teaching me. For all I knew about her, maybe she was bitten in middle age, or even later..."  
  
I blinked as his voice trailed off again. "Well?" I said, still confused. He sighed.  
  
"I think maybe there are other times that a werewolf wants someone else here with them," he said slowly, with an odd, embarrassed tone to his voice. "I've been so lonely, and I'm young enough that maybe...well..."  
  
My breath froze in my throat. "Oh, no," I whispered. "No, Matt. I can't...I..."  
  
"I'm not asking you," he interrupted softly, his face down now and hidden from my eyes by his long bangs. "I don't want this either, and if I was in control of myself in that form, it would never have happened. It wasn't my idea, Mimi..."  
  
I swallowed. "But...I'm not bitten...am I?"  
  
He sighed. "You don't have a mark, but that doesn't mean anything. When I was bitten, the wound healed in less than a day. It doesn't take a lot to make a werewolf; if I broke your skin even a little, it might have healed by the time I became myself again. I suppose I carried you back here," he added, irrelevantly, in a musing tone.  
  
"Here?"  
  
"The tower," he explained. "It's a long trek; we're about as isolated as it gets. The first werewolf to live here must have had that in mind when he built the place."  
  
I shivered. To live here forever, without anyone to talk to? Except Matt, a small voice murmured in the back of my mind, and I shivered again and pushed the thought away. I couldn't think of that...  
  
"But...how will I know?" I asked finally, after a long pause. "If I'm bitten, I mean..."  
  
"We can't know," he said softly. "Not until the moon becomes full again. If you change then, we'll know. If not...you can go home."  
  
'You can go home'. The words rang in my head. "Can't I go now?" I asked. He sighed.  
  
"Mimi, if you leave here now, you might transform right in your house when the full moon hits. Do you want to imagine the kind of carnage that would cause in your neighborhood? The only reason I can keep from that same fate is that the tower is too far from any major towns for me to reach them and get back again in a night. Besides, I don't think a human could get in or out of this place. I only come and go after I'm in my wolf shape, and I never remember how... Whether we like it or not, Mimi, you have to stay here until the moon turns full again. If you aren't infected, I'll carry you down. I think I can get enough control to at least take you home." Again, the word 'home' held an almost resentful note, and now I knew why.  
  
He was a prisoner.  
  
And, for now, so was I.  
  
*~*  
  
The tower proved to be a beautiful place. Ages upon ages of forced inhabitants had resorted to home improvement to lift their boredom, and the result was strikingly beautiful. Almost every wooden surface was carved, from the banisters to the furniture, and all kinds of handiwork covered the walls.  
  
The room Matt brought me to was relatively bare, but had the thickest door with the best locks. He wanted me safe in case anything unexpected happened. He didn't specify what, but I guessed that his transformations had made a habit of giving him little surprises now and then. Anyway, he told me I could bring whatever I liked into it from anywhere in the tower, and I took him up on his word. It really was a beautiful place, and it didn't take me long to choose everything I needed to make my room, if not a much-loved space, then at least a comfortable and attractive one.  
  
I only saw Matt's room a few times, but he had done the same with it. He was a little nervous about letting me in, probably because of the uncertain but likely motive behind his bringing me here. He definitely wasn't comfortable with the idea of kidnapping a wife, even if the wolf side of him was, and he spent a lot of time apologizing for the whole mess. Still, he was good company, better than I remembered him being as a child, and as gracious a host as he could have been, given the situation.  
  
There certainly wasn't anyone else around as an alternative. I never saw another living thing besides us, although I did stumble onto a room filled with ornate-and empty-birdcages once while doing a little exploratory wandering that indicated at least one of the previous residents had tried to bring life and sound into the silent tower. I wondered what the fate of the birds had been, but the cages all appeared to be intact.  
  
Despite the lack of company, we were very well provided for. I chose not to ask Matt where the food came from that appeared on the little table in my room in the mornings, or how there was always a good lunch and dinner waiting in a certain warmly furnished room when we decided we were hungry. He never volunteered the information, and sometimes I thought even he didn't know. I suppose it was all part of the ancient power that hummed in the very stones of the place; I became more and more aware of it as the days ticked away, until it was a constant presence at the back of my mind.  
  
I felt...strange...about it all. I knew this wasn't Matt's fault, and I wasn't angry, but the thought of spending a lifetime here made my insides turn to water. I missed my family with a pain that was almost physical, but as the days turned into weeks the pain lessened, and I found myself forgetting, for minutes, and then hours, that I was a prisoner here. I felt guilty when I first realized this, but I eventually came to welcome the little breaks from homesickness, and even to deliberately try not to think about home.  
  
There was no television and no radio, but there was a library a few floors down from my room, and I spent a lot of time there, for lack of anything else to do. Often Matt came and sat with me, a silent golden shadow at my side as I leafed through this book or that one. I think it meant more than he admitted to have another human being to spend time with. Sometimes we both read; sometimes we talked.  
  
"Do you know who the first werewolf to live here was?" I asked him once, about halfway through my month of isolation with him. He shook his head.  
  
"No, I was never told...but I'm guessing he built this tower. I know it had to have been a long time ago, though. We certainly couldn't build something like this nowadays."  
  
That puzzled me, and I told him so. He shrugged, and a look almost of mischief crossed his face as he stood.  
  
"Come with me," he said, and I put down my book and followed him. He led me up the stairs that ran around the inside wall of the tower, further up than I'd ever gone before. The tower had few windows, and most were so small that they showed no more than a patch of sky, existing only to let light and fresh air into the rooms they belonged to. I'd never really seen the outside of the tower.  
  
It came as a shock, then, when he led me to the top of the stairs and out onto a sort of courtyard on the top of the tower, and I saw nothing but gray mist in every direction.  
  
He strode to the edge, resting his hands on the low stone barrier that kept us from falling off the edge. I joined him, watching his face as he looked down into the mist. As I followed his wistful gaze, I saw...  
  
Nothing.  
  
The entire sturdy structure rested on nothing. I could see the bottom of the tower, though it was made vague and fuzzy by the fog, but beneath it was nothing but more fog.  
  
"We..." I managed, as the blood rushed into my feet.  
  
"We're floating," he agreed, his voice calm, and I fainted.  
  
*~*  
  
I was getting rather tired of waking up on unfamiliar furniture with eerie revelations churning in my head, but it wasn't so bad this time. Once again, Matt was nearby; we were in a room I hadn't seen before, furnished mostly in blue and silver. He sat with his back to me on a low mahogany bench, staring out the largest window I'd seen in the tower yet.  
  
I sat up slowly, not wanting to disturb him, and swung my feet over the edge of the bed I lay on, standing up. He didn't move, but continued to gaze out at the emptiness outside. There was a loneliness in his face that I had never seen before; I supposed he hadn't wanted me to see it, and had hidden it from me when he knew I was watching. It was a tangible cloud around him, and a hollowness in his eyes that hurt to look at. I swallowed and started to take a step forward, wanting to say something profound that would help him...but, with a sinking feeling, I knew that there was nothing I could do. Still, I went to him, touching his shoulder.  
  
"Matt?"  
  
He jumped, half turning and catching my wrist in his hand before his sense could catch up with his reflexes. He didn't squeeze, but I felt the leashed power in his grasp, and stood trembling, afraid to move.  
  
In a split second, he realized and let go, but I took a stumbling step back, suddenly afraid of him again. He stood up slowly, probably trying not to alarm me further, holding out a hand in apology.  
  
"Mimi...I'm sorry, I...I forget, sometimes."  
  
"You forget?" I said, and my voice was oddly high. In all the days I'd been there, he hadn't touched me, and I was unnerved by the steel I'd felt in his fingers. He was dangerous, whether it was his fault or not, and I had forgotten it over the long hours we'd spent together. "You forget what?"  
  
He opened his mouth, closed it again. "I..."  
  
Still quaking, I glanced around the room we stood in. "Where is this?"  
  
He bowed his head, hiding his eyes behind his hair; the rest of his face was unreadable. "I...my room..."  
  
I had never been in it before; and with my sudden fear of him, being there now was frightening in a way I hadn't expected. The memory of why I was here sprang back into my mind, and I took a step back, my fingers twisting fearfully at the hem of my shirt.  
  
He must have seen the look in my eyes, because he went pale.  
  
"Mimi, I didn't-the room, you're only here because it's the only room on the top floor with a place to set you down comfortably...I didn't want to take my chances with any more stairs than I had to. I'm really sorry about...up there. I thought you'd like the view; I didn't think you'd react the way you did..."  
  
"But..." I whispered. His voice rang true, but I was still afraid. "Couldn't you have carried me further? You're very strong..."  
  
There was an odd pause, as his face went slowly blank. "Yes," he said, dully, as if very tired. He picked up a glass from the bench where he'd been sitting; it had the last drops of something clear in it. "I am...strong..." He said the last word as if he hated it, and his fingers clenched on the heavy glass. I let out a little cry as it popped with a sound of shattering crystal, and my hands went to my mouth.  
  
"But I'd rather be normal, and home again," he whispered, staring at the shards of glass still clenched in his fist. I stood frozen, and my fear, oddly enough, wavered at the sight of him standing there with hopelessness in his eyes, turning into something almost like sadness...  
  
Then the first drop of blood fell from his hand, staining the carpet, and I sucked in my breath.  
  
"Oh, no..." I was at his side in two steps, taking his hand in both of mine and opening it. The glass had sliced long rends in his palm and across his fingers, and they had begun to well up with scarlet. "Matt..." I whispered, appalled.  
  
"Don't worry about me," he said bleakly. "It never takes long to heal. See?" He was right; already the bleeding was slowing, and before my eyes the cuts closed again. As they finished healing, he gently took his hand from mine, giving it a shake to rid it of fragments of crystal. "It's nothing," he added, turning away from me. "I did something stupid, that's all."  
  
My throat closed; somehow, it wasn't his hand I was worried about. But he gave me no chance to tell him that.  
  
"I'll be all right," he said, and silently left the room.  
  
*~*  
  
My fourth week was agony. I was torn between hope that I could go home soon, and fear of what I knew could very possibly happen at the end of the week...and another emotion, faint and almost eclipsed by the other two, that niggled at me while I was awake and only really surfaced in my dreams.  
  
My dreams changed as I spent more time in the tower. At first, I dreamt feverishly and fearfully, of snapping teeth and glaring round moons. But gradually my dreams softened, although I rarely remembered them, and I was left with a calm feeling when I awoke. The night before what I hoped would be my last day, I had a dream that I could and did remember.  
  
I was padding through a wood, four-pawed and silent, as spots of life scurried and ran or took flight before me, escaping from my path. I didn't care about them; I was following a scent, a familiar one that drew me onward. As I reached a clearing, the clear light of the almost-full moon streamed down on me, and my body straightened into smooth human lines. I stood, slowly, and saw him. Matt's face was still, but as I looked at him, a flicker of strange emotion-half sadness, half joy-appeared in his eyes, then vanished.  
  
"Mimi," he whispered, as I walked into his arms, and I kissed his cheek.  
  
"I'll stay," I said, and we changed together, loping into the woods as one under the silver moonlight, our footfalls so in tune that we sounded like one wolf...  
  
When I awoke from that dream, I lay staring at my ceiling for a long time, wishes and hopes and dreams tumbling over each other in my heart as I remembered his lonely figure at the window of his room, two weeks before. He needed someone so much... But through all of this was threaded a fear that made my heart cold, and when I rolled over and went to sleep again, I still hadn't made the decision that had seemed so obvious a month before.  
  
What would I do...if I didn't change?  
  
*~*  
  
The next morning at breakfast, Matt was strangely withdrawn. Normally he seemed glad to see me in the mornings, a light filling his eyes as he appeared to realize all over again that he had company for one more day, but on that morning he stared at his dishes, silent. I barely spoke; my mind was still reeling with uncertainty.  
  
"Matt?" I finally asked, and he looked up. "If I don't...become anything...what will happen to me?"  
  
"What will happen?" he echoed. There was a long pause before he answered. "If you don't change, I'll take you down. I've forced control over my wolf body before, and I suppose I can do it again. You can go back to your life."  
  
I swallowed. "If you can control it, why don't you do it all the time?"  
  
His voice barely kept back the harshness of bitter defeat. "Because I can only do it for so long. Because it exhausts me, and because...because it forces me to see everything I do, after that control is finally lost." His voice had faded to a hoarse whisper. "That happened once, and I never wanted it to happen again. Normally, I lose consciousness or something, but when I force myself to stay awake, I can't go back to that peace until the moon sets again..."  
  
"You'd go through that for me?" I whispered, touched and guilty for a reason I couldn't pin down.  
  
"I have to bring you home safely," he said firmly. "I don't want you to go through what I do, Mimi. Not if I can possibly stop it."  
  
"But..." I whimpered, and for a moment the cool woods of the dream filtered into my mind, full of soothing scents and moonlight. "It can't be that bad..."  
  
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth; I'd seen the haunted, fire-eaten look on Matt's face when he mentioned his monthly visits to the world below, and I wished I could snatch the foolish sentence back again. He didn't react at first, though. He just looked down at the table.  
  
"Can it?" he said, almost mildly. "Do you know what it is to never see a living soul without something inside you stirring hungrily? I'm feeling that now, even with you..." He swallowed, his voice tensing, and I shivered. "I go to sleep every full moon's night knowing someone will have died by the next morning, but unable to stop it and too afraid to stay awake and watch my body twist..."  
  
He lifted his hands, looking at them with an expression almost too tired to be disgust. "Do you know what it's like to wake up in the morning with blood under your nails, and not know whose it is or how it got there?"  
  
My chest hurt; I couldn't breathe. The look on his face was so sad, so alone, that I couldn't be afraid of him any more, despite his confession. Instead, I felt a sadness so intense it nearly suffocated me. No one should have to go through life like this, I thought, and on the tail of that thought came another that choked me further.  
  
No one should have to go through life alone. Not with a burden like that.  
  
He straightened then, to look me in the eyes.  
  
"Lock your door tonight," he said quietly. "I might have to struggle for control at first. And..." He stood, pushing back his chair. "Good luck," he finished, and quickly left. I wanted to follow him, but something stopped me.  
  
Instead, I finished my meal, not tasting a bite.  
  
*~*  
  
That night as I stood in my room, looking out the window, I heard him transform. He cried out, once, and I shivered, imagining the feeling of bones shifting and flesh morphing to something alien and unnatural. Then it was finished, and I heard his snarl of frustration as he fought his own body and mind.  
  
The full moonlight shone down on me through the mist, and I remained the same.  
  
A soft scratch at the door alerted me as I stood gazing out the window. As I went to open it and let him in, a tear ran down my cheek.  
  
He was beautiful, all golden fur and fluid movement, so large that his head reached nearly to my shoulder when he stood on all fours. As he looked at me, I saw that the color of his slanted eyes was the same, and intelligence leaped behind them. I didn't think that that intelligence had been there the last time I saw him in this form. It calmed me, somehow. He nudged my hand with his muzzle, as if trying to tell me something, but I only stared at him.  
  
For a moment, I wondered how I would look with soft honey-brown fur.  
  
Then I held out my arm, pulling back the sleeve.  
  
"Do it," I whispered, trying not to think about what I was giving up and succeeding all too easily; my mind was full of the image of a slumped-shouldered form in a window that framed nothing but gray. "I'll stay." The thought of being a werewolf still shuddered my bones, but I was no longer horrified by the thought of being a werewolf's wife.  
  
Our eyes held for a short eternity, and he bared his fangs as I braced myself...  
  
Then his eyes flickered, and he turned his head away.  
  
"But..." I murmured, stunned. "You need me..."  
  
He shook his head, and nudged at my calf, prodding me toward the door. The message was clear; he valued my freedom above his happiness.  
  
And somehow, that hurt the most of all.  
  
*~*  
  
I don't remember the journey back. It all blurs together; freefalling and moonlight and the tang of woodlands mixed with the sweet musk of wolf. We reached my house quickly, and I slid from his back reluctantly, pausing to bury my face and hands in his soft-rough fur for a long moment. He whined softly, nosing my face, and I hugged him. Then he turned and vanished into the trees again with hardly a sound.  
  
It was a long time before I could muster the strength to stand and walk into the house.  
  
I haven't seen him since, although I think about him constantly. Is he alive or dead? Has he been shot, by some victim better armed than his wolf mind could comprehend? Has he found someone, or will he be alone forever? It feels selfish, but I sometimes catch myself hoping he hasn't found another. Then I remember how much I know he needs someone.  
  
I haven't yet heard that rustle in the foliage outside my door. I probably never will again. My doors are locked firmly at night. I know better than to go looking for him; I respect his wishes, and his decision.  
  
But that doesn't stop me from living for the night before the full moon. Because every month since I left the tower, that night is my reality. I dream on that night, and I give myself up to the dreaming; cool silver-blue dreams of pine forests and wolf scent and the pounding of paws in rhythm with mine, as we scatter the mist before us under the light of the full moon...  
  
*~*~*~*~*  
  
(c) Bandit 2001 


End file.
